SCO exercise in Pak, but will India go?

The next SCO-RATS counter-terror exercise will be hosted in Pakistan. While a military exercise on Pakistani soil where India may be a participant is a possibility albeit remote, it may be a ruse by the Russia-China axis to edge out India from the SCO grouping, writes senior journalist Sanjib Kr Baruah.

New Delhi:At the bidding of the powerful nations, there is a ‘Great Game’ in Central Asia and South Asia. Not for nothing did Pakistan PM Imran Khan and Pak Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa link these two regions in their recent lectures at the Islamabad Security Dialogue on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.

Both Khan and Gen Bajwa had underlined the “untapped potential of South and Central Asia” the key to which lay in a “stable Indo-Pak relation” and for which the “Kashmir dispute” was described as the “head of this problem”.

And with this year’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) exercise under the of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to be held at the Pakistani town of Pabbi, the question is—is the Russia-China axis trying to edge out India from SCO as the possibility is strong that India may refuse to participate.

While planning for the Joint Anti-terrorist Exercise (JATE) of the SCO member states for 2021 began earlier, Pakistan had sent a delegation to the SCO-RATS HQ at Tashkent where on February 23-24, 2021, it “presented preliminary information on the design and preparation of JATE Pabbi-Antiterror-2021”.

Pabbi is located in the Nowshera district and is located about 20 km away from Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province.

In India, it is the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) that deals with SCO matters. An Indian official source told ETV Bharat that the decision to hold the SCO-RATS exercise had to be a collective decision that was taken at Tashkent in Uzbekistan where the SCO was headquartered. Interestingly, Indian representatives are posted at the SCO HQ.

With aims for political, economic, military cooperation, coordination and solidarity in Eurasia, SCO was formed in 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. Now SCO has eight full members including India, Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

Held once in two years, the SCO-RATS multilateral exercise was last held on August 22-29, 2018 at Chelyabinsk in Russia where both India and Pakistan participated.

Russia-China Axis

India has developed unprecedented close military and strategic ties with the US and has become an important member in the ‘Quad’ with Australia and Japan being the other members.

The ‘Quad’ seeks to spearhead and safeguard US and western interests in the Indian Ocean and Pacific region, against rising Chinese power and its growing spheres of influence. Also, the Biden presidency’s aggressive attitude against Russia has served to bring Russia and China closer.

That the India-Russia bilateral relationship—traditionally a warm one—is undergoing profound changes is undoubtedly true. Recent reports speak of Russia as the one that blocked India’s seat at the high table to deliberate and resolves the Afghanistan issue. After all, including India on the Afghan issue would mean strengthening US stakes.

Notably, on December 8, 2020, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov had been quite blunt: “India is currently an object of the Western countries’ persistent, aggressive and devious policy as they are trying to engage it in anti-China games by promoting Indo-Pacific strategies, the so-called ‘Quad’, while at the same time the West is attempting to undermine our close partnership and privileged relations with India.”

While Russia has been irked no end, China comes into the immediate picture as the ‘Quad’ grouping is openly adopting an anti-China stance.

The India-China bilateral relationship is at its nadir even as a standoff continues between Asia’s two biggest militaries in eastern Ladakh and elsewhere along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The border row had escalated into an unprecedented showdown in the region with the Galwan Valley incident marking the worst violent encounter between the two neighbours in decades when at least 24 lives soldiers died from both sides.

At the same time, while India continues with its border area infrastructure development, China is aggressively implementing its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that has the potential to strategically encircle India.